Barnaby Rudge quotes

… appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true believers exulted as in a victory.

Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.

Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved;

… fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among them all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest.

With its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were nodding in its sleep.

Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy to detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and discoloured like an old man’s skin;

John looked sedately and solemnly at his questioner until he had brought his mind to bear upon the whole of his observation, and then made answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that the moon was peculiarly his business and nobody else’s:

“Never you mind about the moon. Don’t you trouble yourself about her. You let the moon alone, and I’ll let you alone.”

“No offence I hope?” said the little man.

“Why that’s the proper time for me to talk, isn’t it?” said Joe rebelliously.

“The proper time, sir!” retorted his father, “the proper time’s no time.”

“Ah to be sure!” muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.

Varden,” he said, as they stood without, in the porch, and the locksmith was equipping himself for his journey home; “I take it very kind of you to say all this, but the time’s nearly come when the Maypole and I must part company.”

“Roving stones gather no moss, Joe,” said Gabriel.

“Nor milestones much,” replied Joe. “I’m little better than one here, and see as much of the world.”

“Roving stones gather no moss, Joe,” said Gabriel.

“Nor milestones much,” replied Joe. “I’m little better than one here, and see as much of the world.”

“Then, what would you do, Joe?” pursued the locksmith, stroking his chin reflectively. “What could you be? Where could you go, you see?”

Startling as his aspect was, the features were good, and there was something even plaintive in his wan and haggard aspect.

But, the absence of the soul is far more terrible in a living man than in a dead one; and in this unfortunate being its noblest powers were wanting.

His dress was of green, clumsily trimmed here and there—apparently by his own hands—with gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most worn and soiled, and poorest where it was at the best.

“Who? Why, you,” returned his master. “What do you mean by making those horrible faces over your breakfast?”

“Faces are matters of taste, sir,” said Mr. Tappertit, rather discomfited; not the less so because he saw the locksmith’s daughter smiling.

“Sim,” rejoined Gabriel, laughing heartily. “Don’t be a fool, for I’d rather see you in your senses. These young fellows,” he added, turning to his daughter, “are always committing some folly or another.

and therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual in two volumes post octavo.

Like some other ladies who in remote ages flourished upon this globe, Mrs. Varden was most devout when most ill-tempered.

Whenever she and her husband were at unusual variance, then the Protestant Manual was in high feather.

Oh! he’s a merry fellow. Tell me—is he silly too? I think he is.”

“Because he never tires of mocking me, but does it all day long.⁠—Why don’t you come?”

“Upstairs. He wants you. Stay—where’s his shadow? Come. You’re a wise man; tell me that.”

“Gone out a walking, maybe?”

“He has changed shadows with a woman,” the idiot whispered in his ear, and then fell back with a look of triumph.

“Her shadow’s always with him, and his with her. That’s sport I think, eh?”

“Dreams, Barnaby, dreams,” said the locksmith.

“Dreams!” he echoed softly, drawing closer to him. “Those are not dreams.”

“What are,” replied the locksmith, “if they are not?”

… much on one side, and his bright eye shining like a diamond, preserved a thoughtful silence for a few seconds, and then replied in a voice so hoarse and distant, that it seemed to come through his thick feathers rather than out of his mouth.

“Halloa, halloa, halloa! What’s the matter here! Keep up your spirits. Never say die. Bow wow wow. I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil. Hurrah!”

—And then, as if exulting in his infernal character, he began to whistle.

Mrs. Varden was a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper⁠—a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.

Thus it generally happened, that when other people were merry, Mrs. Varden was dull; and that when other people were dull, Mrs. Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful.

He dozed again—not the less pleasantly, perhaps, for his hearty temper. While his eyes were closed, the door leading to the upper stairs was partially opened; and a head appeared, which, at sight of him, hastily drew back again.

“I wish,” murmured Gabriel, waking at the noise, and looking round the room, “I wish somebody would marry Miggs. But that’s impossible! I wonder whether there’s any madman alive, who would marry Miggs!”

This was such a vast speculation that he fell into a doze again, and slept until the fire was quite burnt out. At last he roused himself;

At this intelligence, the ’Prentice Knights arose in haste, and marshalling into a line, filed off one by one and dispersed with all speed to their several homes, leaving their leader to pass the grating last.

“Good night, noble captain,” whispered the blind man as he held it open for his passage out; “Farewell, brave general. Bye, bye, illustrious commander. Good luck go with you for a⁠—conceited, bragging, empty-headed, duck-legged idiot.”

With which parting words, coolly added as he listened to his receding footsteps and locked the grate upon himself, he descended the steps, and lighting the fire below the little copper, prepared, without any assistance, for his daily occupation;

Having helped the wayward ’prentice in, she faintly articulated the words “Simmun is safe!” and yielding to her woman’s nature, immediately became insensible.

“I knew I should quench her,” said Sim, rather embarrassed by this circumstance.

“Of course I was certain it would come to this, but there was nothing else to be done—if I hadn’t eyed her over, she wouldn’t have come down. Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slippery figure she is! There’s no holding her, comfortably.

the fireside had become mercenary—a something to be bought and sold—a very courtesan: let who would die, or sit beside, or leave it, it was still the same—it missed nobody, cared for nobody, had equal warmth and smiles for all.

God help the man whose heart ever changes with the world, as an old mansion when it becomes an inn!

No effort had been made to furnish this chilly waste, but before the broad chimney a colony of chairs and tables had been planted on a square of carpet, flanked by a ghostly screen, enriched with figures, grinning and grotesque.

Nor eyes in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts when it blows hard, nor do you hear voices in the air, nor see men stalking in the sky—not you! I lead a merrier life than you, with all your cleverness.

You’re the dull men. We’re the bright ones.

Ha! ha! I’ll not change with you, clever as you are—not I!”

“In short, justifying the means by the end, we are, as a last resource for tearing them asunder, to resort to treachery and—and lying,” said Mr. Haredale.

“Oh dear no. Fie, fie!” returned the other, relishing a pinch of snuff extremely. “Not lying. Only a little management, a little diplomacy, a little⁠—intriguing, that’s the word.”

“I wish,” said Mr. Haredale, moving to and fro, and stopping, and moving on again, like one who was ill at ease, “that this could have been foreseen or prevented.

So, waving his hand slightly, and putting on his hat as he turned upon his heel, he went clanking out as he had come, shut the door behind him, and tramped down the echoing stairs.

“Pah! A very coarse animal, indeed!” said Mr. Chester, composing himself in the easy-chair again. “A rough brute. Quite a human badger!”

John Willet and his friends, who had been listening intently for the clash of swords, or firing of pistols in the great room, and had indeed settled the order in which they should rush in when summoned—in which procession old John had carefully arranged that …

“be more companionable and communicative. Be more the gentleman in this good company. There are tales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know not what.”

“We all have, have we not?” returned the stranger, looking up. “If we were fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.”

“It goes rather hard with you, indeed,” said the fellow, as the stranger disclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. “What of that? Be merry, master. A stave of a roaring song now”—

Mrs. Varden returned from the contemplation of these wonders to the bar again, with a head quite dizzy and bewildered. Her housekeeping capacity was not large enough to comprehend them. She was obliged to go to sleep.

Waking was pain, in the midst of such immensity.

Dolly in the meanwhile, whose gay heart and head ran upon other matters, passed out at the garden door, and glancing back now and then (but of course not wondering whether Joe saw her), tripped away by a path across the fields with which she …

… of sustenance, and might have a decent halting-place or halfway house between dinner and supper—a few savoury trifles in the shape of great rashers of broiled ham, which being well cured, done to a turn, and smoking hot, sent forth a tempting and delicious fragrance.

Mrs. Varden was seldom very Protestant at meals, unless it happened that they were underdone, or overdone, or indeed that anything occurred to put her out of humour.

Her spirits rose considerably on beholding these goodly preparations, and from the nothingness of good works, she passed to the somethingness of ham and toast with great cheerfulness.

“My stars, Simmun!” cried Miggs, in affected astonishment. “You frighten me to death! What’s the matter?”

“There are strings,” said Mr. Tappertit, flourishing his bread-and-cheese knife in the air, “in the human heart that had better not be wibrated. That’s what’s the matter.”

“Oh, very well—if you’re in a huff,” cried Miggs, turning away.

I should quite blush for myself before this stupendous creature, if remembering his precepts, one might blush at anything. An amazing man! a nobleman indeed! any King or Queen may make a Lord, but only the Devil himself—and the Graces—can make a Chesterfield.”

Men who are thoroughly false and hollow, seldom try to hide those vices from themselves; and yet in the very act of avowing them, they lay claim to the virtues they feign most to despise.

“For,” say they, “this is honesty, this is truth. All mankind are like us, but they have not the candour to avow it.”

The despisers of mankind—apart from the mere fools and mimics, of that creed—are of two sorts. They who believe their merit neglected and unappreciated, make up one class; they who receive adulation and flattery, knowing their own worthlessness, compose the other.

Be sure that the coldest-hearted misanthropes are ever of this last order.

Mr.

it is something to be assured that, however lightly men may crush that faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts it even to his despised and slighted work.

Who would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight, than a wise man pining in a darkened jail!

Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown; read in the Everlasting Book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach.

Think what she was, sir. It makes my heart ache now, even now, though I’m an old man, with a woman for a daughter, to think what she was and what she is. We all change, but that’s with Time;

Time does his work honestly, and I don’t mind him. A fig for Time, sir.

Use him well, and he’s a hearty fellow, and scorns to have you at a disadvantage.

We all change, but that’s with Time; Time does his work honestly, and I don’t mind him. A fig for Time, sir. Use him well, and he’s a hearty fellow, and scorns to have you at a disadvantage.

But care and suffering (and those have changed her) are devils, sir⁠—secret, stealthy, undermining devils⁠—who tread down the brightest flowers in Eden, and do more havoc in a month than Time does in a year.

Picture to yourself for one minute what Mary was before they went to work with her fresh heart and face—do her that justice—and say whether such a thing is possible.”

How dare you, Dolly? I’m astonished at you. The rudeness of your whole behaviour this evening has been disgraceful. Did anybody ever hear,” cried the enraged matron, bursting into tears, “of a daughter telling her own mother she has been made game of!”

What a very uncertain temper Mrs. Varden’s was!

The thoughts of worldly men are forever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth.

The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading.

The envious man beholds his neighbours’ honours even in the sky; to the money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, the whole great universe above glitters with sterling coin—fresh from the mint—stamped with the sovereign’s head—coming always between them and heaven, turn where they may.

So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.

Everything was fresh and gay, as though the world were but that morning made, when Mr. Chester rode at a tranquil pace along the Forest road. Though early in the season, it was warm and genial weather;

Joe, with his stick and bundle on his shoulder, quickly stood on the firm earth, and looked up at the old Maypole, it might be for the last time.

He didn’t apostrophise it, for he was no great scholar. He didn’t curse it, for he had little ill-will to give to anything on earth.

He felt more affectionate and kind to it than ever he had done in all his life before, so said with all his heart, “God bless you!” as a parting wish, and turned away.

“I believe he is,” replied the host. “It’s much the same thing, whatever regiment he’s recruiting for.

I’m told there an’t a deal of difference between a fine man and another one, when they’re shot through and through.

”

“Tush, man!” said Joe, “I’m not so young as that.

Needs must when the devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an unhappy home.

For the present, goodbye.”

He went out by Islington and so on to Highgate, and sat on many stones and gates, but there were no voices in the bells to bid him turn.

Since the time of noble Whittington, fair flower of merchants, bells have come to have less sympathy with humankind. They only ring for money and on state occasions.

Wanderers have increased in number; ships leave the Thames for distant regions, carrying from stem to stern no other cargo; the bells are silent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets; they are used to it and have grown worldly.

Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come singly.

There is little doubt that troubles are exceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying in flocks, are apt to perch capriciously;

Within, what carpet like its crunching sand, what music merry as its crackling logs, what perfume like its kitchen’s dainty breath, what weather genial as its hearty warmth!

Blessings on the old house, how sturdily it stood!

How did the vexed wind chafe and roar about its stalwart roof; how did it pant and strive with its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from their hospitable throats, great clouds of smoke, and puffed defiance in its face;

whether he had any idea that such an event had ever taken place. Therefore, even while he slept, no one ventured to refer to it in his presence; and for such sufficient reasons, these his chosen friends were silent now.

Mr. Willet had got by this time into such a complication of knots, that it was perfectly clear he must wake or die. He chose the former alternative, and opened his eyes.

“If he don’t come in five minutes,” said John, “I shall have supper without him.”

“The wind,” cried Parkes. “It’s howling like a Christian, and has been all night long.”

“Did you ever, sir,” asked John, after a minute’s contemplation, “hear the wind say ‘Maypole’?”

“Why, what man ever did?” said Parkes.

“If that’s any comfort to anybody, they’re welcome to it. If it an’t, I’m sorry for ’em. If either of you two gentlemen likes to go out and see what’s the matter, you can.

I’m not curious, myself.

”

“—Or that,” returned John Grueby, beating down his guard with his whip, and striking him on the head with its butt end. “Yes, I played a little once.

You wear your hair too long; I should have cracked your crown if it had been a little shorter.

”

“True. No—No. I—I didn’t mean it,” replied the other, shaking him by the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room. “

It’s a proud thing to lead the people, Gashford

,” he added as he made a sudden halt.

… addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture.

Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master-passion.

To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.

“I am not much of a dab at my exercise,” he said under his breath, “but I shall get into fewer scrapes at that work than at this.

Every man came into the world for something; my department seems to be to make every woman cry without meaning it.

It’s rather hard!”

… the houses had not done so, sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the people were who lived in the crazy huts adjacent, and how foolhardy it might prove for one who carried money, or wore decent clothes, to walk that way alone, unless by daylight.

Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as wealth has.

Some of these cabins were turreted, some had false windows painted on their rotten walls; one had a mimic clock, upon a crazy tower of four feet high, which screened the chimney; each in its little patch of ground had a rude seat or arbour.

“Do you not see,” she said, “how red it is?

Nothing bears so many stains of blood, as gold.

Avoid it. None have such cause to hate its name as we have. Do not so much as think of it, dear love.

As he spoke, he raised the mug of water to his mouth. It was clear, and cold, and sparkling, but not to his taste nevertheless, or his thirst was not very great, for he only wetted his lips and put it down again.

He wore, hanging with a long strap round his neck, a kind of scrip or wallet, in which to carry food.

The widow set some bread and cheese before him, but he thanked her, and said that through the kindness of the charitable he had broken his fast once since morning, and was not hungry.

“He is. Close at hand.”

“Not lost, widow,” said the blind man, calmly; “only found. Shall I call him?”

“Not for the world,” she answered, with a shudder.

oh yes, it’s far worse in him, who can barely live on the few halfpence that are thrown to him in streets, than in you, who can see, and work, and are not dependent on the mercies of the world. A curse on you!

You who have five senses may be wicked at your pleasure; we who have four, and want the most important, are to live and be moral on our affliction.

The true charity and justice of rich to poor, all the world over!”

He had to bid him go back in a surly tone, and his heart smote him while he did so. The dog retreated; turned with a half-incredulous, half-imploring look; came a little back; and stopped.

It was the last appeal of an old companion and a faithful friend⁠—cast off.

Barnaby could bear no more, and as he shook his head and waved his playmate home, he burst into tears.

With which mournful review of their proceedings,

Mr. Dennis sought consolation in cold boiled beef and beer

; but without at all relaxing the grim and dissatisfied expression of his face, the gloom of which was rather deepened than dissipated by their grateful influence.

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city.

Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself;

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell.

Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable, or more cruel.

The people who were boisterous at Westminster upon the Friday morning, and were eagerly bent upon the work of devastation in Duke Street and Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same.

Each tumult took shape and form from the circumstances of the moment; sober workmen, going home from their day’s labour, were seen to cast down their baskets of tools and become rioters in an instant; mere boys on errands did the like.

In a word, a moral plague ran through the city.

The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had for hundreds and hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist. The contagion spread like a dread fever:

then at Solomon Daisy, from his eyebrow to his shoe-buckle; then very slowly round the bar. And then a great, round, leaden-looking, and not at all transparent tear, came rolling out of each eye, and he said, as he shook his head:

“If they’d only had the goodness to murder me, I’d have thanked ’em kindly.”

“No, no, no, don’t say that, Johnny,” whimpered his little friend. “It’s very, very bad, but not quite so bad as that. No, no!”

and in patting her on the cheek, and saying with a merry laugh,

“Am I silly now, mother⁠—am I silly now?”

With a lighter heart and step, and eyes the brighter for the happy tear that dimmed them for a moment, Barnaby resumed his walk; and singing gaily to himself, kept guard upon his quiet post.

and some half-dozen men lay fast asleep upon their backs, snoring in concert. After remaining here just long enough to note these things, he was marched out again, and conveyed across the parade-ground to another portion of the building.

Perhaps a man never sees so much at a glance as when he is in a situation of extremity.

The chances are a hundred to one, that if Barnaby had lounged in at the gate to look about him, he would have lounged out again with a very imperfect idea of the place, and would have remembered very little about it.

“Disrespectful, my lord!” returned the old gentleman. “

I was respectful five times yesterday. I can’t be respectful forever.

Men can’t stand on being respectful when their houses are going to be burnt over their heads, with them in ’em. What am I to do, my lord? Am I to have any protection!”

“I told you yesterday, sir,” said the Lord Mayor, “that you might have an alderman in your house, if you could get one to come.”

“What the devil’s the good of an alderman?” returned the choleric old gentleman.

“—To awe the crowd, sir,” said the Lord Mayor.

He said nothing in reply at first, but held down his head, and struggled with him silently. Finding the younger man too strong for him, he raised his face, looked close into his eyes, and said,

God knows what magic the name had for his ears; but Barnaby released his hold, fell back, and looked at him aghast.

Suddenly he sprung towards him, put his arms about his neck, and pressed his head against his cheek.

The locksmith turned, with a start, towards the place from which the words had come, and looked hurriedly at the people who were hanging on the ladder and clinging to each other.

“Pay no respect to my grey hair, young man,” he said, answering the voice and not anyone he saw. “I don’t ask it. My heart is green enough to scorn and despise every man among you, band of robbers that you are!”

This incautious speech by no means tended to appease the ferocity of the crowd. They cried again to have him brought out;

… not near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing, tore up the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and fury they could not have surpassed if that had been the jail, and they were near their object.

Not one living creature in the throng was for an instant still. The whole great mass were mad.

A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or what it meant. But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield, and drop from its topmost hinge.

for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, “

Dennis, you’re a rum dog; you’re a queer fellow; you’re capital company, Dennis, and quite a character!

”

and, sometimes calling on her dear old grey-haired father, sometimes on her mother, and sometimes even on her old home, pined slowly away, like a poor bird in its cage.

Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily on a smooth stream, that are so sparkling and buoyant in the sunshine⁠—down upon fruit, bloom upon flowers, blush in summer air, life of the winged insect, whose whole existence is a day⁠—how soon ye sink in troubled water!

Poor Dolly’s heart—a little, gentle, idle, fickle thing; giddy, restless, fluttering; constant to nothing but bright looks, and smiles and laughter—Dolly’s heart was breaking.

… laid down his knife and fork on either side his plate, drank a long draught from a tankard beside him (still keeping his eyes on Joe), and leaning backward in his chair and fetching a long breath, said, as he looked all round the board:

“It’s been took off!”

“By George!” said the Black Lion, striking the table with his hand, “he’s got it!”

I am not the less obliged to him for volunteering that evidence.

These insane creatures make such very odd and embarrassing remarks, that they really ought to be hanged for the comfort of society.

”

“They’ll hang me by a trick, and keep the pardon back. It’s a plot against me. I shall lose my life!” And uttering another yell, he fell in a fit upon the ground.

“See the hangman when it comes home to him!” cried Hugh again, as they bore him away

—“Ha ha ha! Courage, bold Barnaby, what care we? Your hand! They do well to put us out of the world, for if we got loose a second time, we wouldn’t let them off so easy, eh? Another shake! A man can die but once.

gazing at the slowly-swelling crowd, and at the workmen as they rested listlessly against the scaffold—affecting to listen with indifference to the proprietor’s eulogy of the commanding view his house afforded, and the surpassing cheapness of his terms.

A fairer morning never shone.

From the roofs and upper stories of these buildings, the spires of city churches and the great cathedral dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison, into the blue sky, and clad in the colour of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmosphere …

It was better in the solitude and gloom of midnight with a few forms clustering about it, than in the freshness and the stir of morning: the centre of an eager crowd.

It was better haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in their beds, and influencing perchance the city’s dreams, than braving the broad day, and thrusting its obscene presence upon their waking senses.

Five o’clock had struck—six—seven—and eight. Along the two main streets at either end of the crossway, a living stream had now set in, rolling towards the marts of gain and business.

Look where you would among the crowd, you saw strained eyes and lips compressed; it would have been difficult for the most vigilant observer to point this way or that, and say that yonder man had cried out.

It were as easy to detect the motion of lips in a seashell.

Three quarters past eleven! Many spectators who had retired from the windows, came back refreshed, as though their watch had just begun. Those who had fallen asleep, roused themselves;

“Not through you,” said the idiot, mildly. “Don’t say that. You were not to blame. You have always been very good to me.—

Hugh, we shall know what makes the stars shine, now!

”

He could say nothing to her. Not a syllable.

There was an odd sort of eloquence in his one arm, which had crept round her waist: but his lips were mute.

“If you had reminded me by a word—only by one short word,” sobbed Dolly, clinging yet closer to him, “how little I deserved that you should treat me with so much forbearance;

I hoped you would come back that night. I made quite sure you would. I prayed for it on my knees. Through all these long, long years, I have never once forgotten you, or left off hoping that this happy time might come.”

The eloquence of Joe’s arm surpassed the most impassioned language; and so did that of his lips⁠—yet he said nothing, either.

“And now, at last,” cried Dolly, trembling with the fervour of her speech, “if you were sick, and shattered in your every limb; if you were ailing, weak, and sorrowful;

“More than you imagine,” returned Mr. Haredale. “

We note the harvest more than the seedtime.

You do so in me.”

“Tut, tut,” said Mr. Haredale, “ ’twas not very difficult to read a thought so natural. But you are mistaken nevertheless. I have had my share of sorrows—more than the common lot, perhaps, but I have borne them ill.

I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God’s great creation.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.”

I have had my share of sorrows—more than the common lot, perhaps, but I have borne them ill. I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God’s great creation.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.

”